Wednesday, July 02, 2008

A few minutes after she delivered a speech at our Structure 08 conference in San Francisco, I caught up with Microsoft’s corporate VP of global foundation services, Debra Chrapaty, for a video chat. I think a more appropriate title for her would be Mr. Softie’s Internet Infrastructure Czar. I found her very knowledgeable, engaging and open with her opinions. “We have some new innovations up our sleeve that are going to knock the socks of anything anyone is doing, including our friends down south,” she told me. She didn’t name Google, of course, but we all know who she was talking about.

Her candor was one of the reasons I wanted decided to share the video with you guys. The common theme of the conversation: Microsoft is spending liberally to build out its Internet infrastructure, including upgrading its backbone network and scaling out its data center infrastructure by adding new technologies.

When I asked her exactly how much Microsoft was spending on it, she dodged the question, saying just that it was a big number. This much we do know: Two years ago, the company was spending close to $2 billion on its infrastructure; it has since undertaken the development of six data centers, with parts of two networks already online.

Facts About Microsoft-Owned Data Centers

Adding 10,000 servers a month

New data centers being planned/under construction are equivalent of over 15 US football fields of data center space.

Plans to cut of 30% to 40% in data-center power costs company-wide over the next two years.

Current network backbone runs at about 100 gigabits per second, but soon Microsoft plans to bump it to 500 Gigabits. I think this could be big for Level 3, long time partner of Microsoft.

Building out its own CDN (Edge) network - 99 nodes on a 100 gigabit per second backbone.

For Microsoft, total data grows ten times every three years. The data in near future will soon approach 100s of petabytes. This includes data from all of their online services.

Source: Microsoft, GigaOM

Location

Status

Quincy, Washington

Opened April 2007, construction continues

When complete, it will consume 48 megawatts of energy. Microsoft can tap up to 72 MW of energy coming from hydro power. Microsoft is paying about 1.8 cents per kilowatt, but will rise to between 2.6-to-2.9 cents per kilowatt as more capacity goes online. Two data centers in this location.

San Antonio, Texas

Under Construction, planned opening September 2008

It will be 447,000 square feet on 44 acres. Microsoft is building two data centers here

Dublin, Ireland

Under Construction

first Windows Live data center outside the U.S.

Northlake, Illinois

Under Construction, Phase one to go live in October 2008

The first floor of this facility is going to be entirely made of containers and would house Microsoft search.

Iowa

TBD

Source: Microsoft

Watch the video to get the full low-down, but if you’re in a hurry, here are some highlights, including her quotes from our conversation.

“We are building data centers but I don’t want to say not just data centers. We are already on to our second generation data centers. More utilization, better density and more power efficient.” For Chrapaty, power efficiency is not just talk, it’s her mission — she is the driving force behind Microsoft’s server utilization.

“Infrastructure is a differentiator. I use FedEx as an example. They are world’s most predominant distribution company. It wasn’t that they had a great brand or they had all these plans. No, what they did was find these strategic landing fields where they could get in and out quickly to key distribution points across the globe. It defined their company. I think the same is true in the infrastructure now. Data centers are already becoming a scarce resource.” Google realized this a long time ago; Microsoft is now demonstrating how it can put money to work and build an advantage over others.

Like Google, Microsoft is taking the design of servers into its own hands. “We are doing some unique things in the mother board designs, server designs, and because we are Microsoft, operating systems.”

She’s a big champion of container data centers, which essentially act like the trailers on long-haul trucks, optimized and packed with all sorts of gear — servers, switches, storage systems — that’s wheeled in and plugged into the power grid and the network. Sounds like Rackable Systems and Verari are major suppliers of these containers to Microsoft; the company is making extensive use of them in their Chicago facility.

Her comments indicate that Microsoft has plans to offer managed services to large corporations.

She lets us know first that they are building a IOWA data center, which is huge for Iowa. Google has one in Iowa too.